Tale Skjølsvik and Karl Joachim Breunig
This paper aims to explore how professional competences are defined and assessed by clients of professional service firms (PSFs). Extant research has studied the knowledge base of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how professional competences are defined and assessed by clients of professional service firms (PSFs). Extant research has studied the knowledge base of professionals, but limited research has been conducted to develop an understanding of how clients value this knowledge.
Design/methodology/approach
The study is based on in-depth qualitative research design, which is suitable for inductive theory building. The collected data consist of interviews with 80 clients and sellers of professional services.
Findings
The authors offer a framework detailing the interrelationships between knowledge, experience and references as assessed by clients. In particular, references are used to evaluate experience, which in turn function as a proxy for how clients assess knowledge. Also, the study shows how the clients’ assessment of professional knowledge assets involves multiple levels and factors.
Research limitations/implications
Limited research has been conducted to understand client preferences and PSF competitive advantage from a client perspective. This paper contributes to extant literature on knowledge management by integrating it with insights from recent developments within service marketing focusing on client centricity and the role of clients in value creation. This perspective complements and extends what is already known about knowledge management.
Practical implications
The paper suggests that while it is essential to manage knowledge as such, references and experience has a very central role in selling and commercializing knowledge-intensive services. Thus, to the degree that clients buy knowledge, sellers should think carefully about how experience and references are developed, captured and conveyed to clients. From a client point, the identified framework has value in offering a client-centric conceptualization of knowledge that can be used as a starting point in defining their knowledge needs and in structuring and professionalizing their purchasing efforts related to professional services.
Originality/value
Knowledge-intensive service organizations sell their knowledge and resources to clients directly as experts and indirectly through their services. It is therefore imperative for these organizations to understand how their knowledge is evaluated by buyers. The paper takes a unique client-centric perspective in understanding knowledge from a buyer’s point of view and as perceived by the buyer, which largely has been lacking in existing knowledge management research.
Details
Keywords
While goods- and service-dominant logics are separated in most research as alternative and often incompatible paradigms, this paper aims to show how these logics can be and are…
Abstract
Purpose
While goods- and service-dominant logics are separated in most research as alternative and often incompatible paradigms, this paper aims to show how these logics can be and are combined in purchasing strategies in organizations. The paper also illustrates that multiple logics exist in addition to purely goods- or service-based logics.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on empirical data on the purchasing of management consulting services, which represent an extreme context for understanding the combination and intersection of goods- and service-dominant logics. In particular, four in-depth case studies and interviews with 51 sellers and 30 buyers of management consulting services are used to develop a typology of purchasing approaches that combines goods- and service-dominant logics.
Findings
The study shows that goods- and service-dominant logics are combined in two main purchasing phases: supplier set selection and assignment selection. In both these phases, parallel and knowledge-based, embedded and experience-based approaches were identified as ways of combining goods- and service-dominant logics in the purchasing context.
Research limitations/implications
The research presented in the following adds to our existing understanding of possible purchasing strategies under multiple logics in buying organizations. Future research should explore the conditions under which different strategies are and should be applied in organizations.
Practical implications
This paper gives practitioners alternative approaches to choose from in their purchasing and sales of knowledge-intensive services, in addition to transactional and relational strategies.
Originality/value
The research adds to existing research on business and industrial marketing by identifying particular purchasing strategies on a continuum between goods- and service-dominant logics.
Details
Keywords
Mariangela Piazza, Erica Mazzola and Filippo Chiarello
Prior crowdsourcing literature has highlighted that communication among peers within the crowdsourcing community matters since it affects the solvers’ success. Particularly…
Abstract
Purpose
Prior crowdsourcing literature has highlighted that communication among peers within the crowdsourcing community matters since it affects the solvers’ success. Particularly, previous scholars have focused on how the volume and the content of communications among solvers improve their creativity and likelihood of winning crowdsourcing contests. This study aims to understand whether, alongside these two communication dimensions, the linguistic style of solvers’ communications (i.e. how solvers write things) permits them to promote their qualities in seekers’ eyes and emerge from the crowd.
Design/methodology/approach
Empirically, we collected data from a sample of 1866 solvers within the community of the 99designs crowdsourcing platform to build an ad-hoc dataset and test our hypotheses by running an econometric analysis.
Findings
Our results show that by posting comments of moderate length and prudent complexity, characterized by positive language and an other-oriented perspective, solvers can signal their capabilities and skills to increase their likelihood of succeeding in crowdsourcing contests.
Originality/value
This research’s findings contribute to prior crowdsourcing literature, which has so far exclusively focused on the linguistic style used by seekers when drafting the requests for proposals of their competitions. Moreover, the paper offers practical guidance for both solvers and seekers, suggesting how to leverage peer communications in crowdsourcing contests.